The 2019 Buckets Cup final will be contested by The Craggy Islanders and Neil Madrid. Both are previous league winners and losing cup finalists, so whoever wins will become just the third team to have won both a Buckets Cup and a Buckets League title. We could even see another double with the Islanders taking their place at the top of the league this week and Neil Madrid closing the gap in fourth place.

Another relatively low scoring week on the whole. Two missed penalties by PEA and Paul Pogba may have affected some final totals. Bad if you had both. Double bad if you stuck the armband on one of them. Pogba particularly was a popular choice for captain. I don’t think any of us were unlucky enough to chance the triple captain. Drop It’s 70 points contained a 25 point West Ham contribution. Is that part of a strategy working towards the blank in which the Hammers are one of the ten teams with a game?

Player of the week – Declan Rice West Ham United – 15 points

There aren’t many players who have ended the gameweek as the highest scorer on two occasions. Who’d have thought a West Ham defender would achieve that feat, particularly given their shoddy clean sheet record. Rice’s goal, clean sheet and top bonus against Newcastle matches his performance against Arsenal back in GW22. It’s worth noting in the six intervening games he’s only picked up an additional 10 points.

Bargain of the week – Andreas Periera – Manchester United – 12 points

The second best goal in a game full of cracking goals and an assist to one of Romelu Lukaku’s double and, given the lengthy Old Trafford injury list, we have a £4.5 million Manchester United player in with a shout of nailing down a place for the forthcoming double gameweeks.

Twat of the week – Lucas Torriera – Arsenal – -2 points

Not many North London derbies go by without a red card. This time Arsenal’s tenacious Uruguayan midfielder got the early bath – if you can call the 95th minute early. I’m sure most managers will be cursing those penalty misses more.

Are we on for another double winner in their debut season, much like FC Caligula did in 2015/2016? Hornets are still fighting on both fronts. Their score was the lowest of the quarter final winners this week, but still above the game average and most importantly, enough to see off Fun Lovren Criminals. They will play first time semi finalists, Game of Throw Ins, whilst another last four debutant, Atletico Chappers, will take on Emergency Gap Jumper. Should be an interesting final in Gameweek 31.

Manager of the week – The Vinegar Pissers – Paul Hawkins – 74 points

Three scores crept above 70 points this week, the highest of which was the 74 posted by The Vinegar Pissers. They’re the latest team to launch an assault on the Hornets domination, climbing up into third just behind Brexiter, who themselves, narrowed the gap by three. As well as picking up on another player of the week performance by Heung-Min Son, the Pissers also garnered 15 points from both of Brighton’s goalscorers in their victory over Arsenal. Glen Murray has six in eight games and only Mo Salah and Sergio Aguero have scored more since the turn of the year.

Player of the week – Heung-Min Son – 16 points

His second player of the week total and with that becomes only the third player this season to achieve the highest weekly score on more than one occasion. He had been on a run of blank weeks since his last double figure score and had started dropping out of teams. No goals and assists, the return to the team of Erik Lamela and the purchase of Lucas Moura obviously putting doubt about his return potential. That’ll probably reverse now and He’ll no doubt be a popular choice once Spurs’s double gameweek(s) roll round.

Bargain of the week – Ki Sung-Yeung – 13 points

A South Korean double at the top of the weekly player tables this week. Ki has played nearly every game under Swansea’s new manager and has obviously played an important part in their revival. His last run in the team under the previous manager yielded no returns at all. This time round he has two goals, two assists and two double figure totals in the last four games. And for under £5 million. There’ll be Swansea double gameweeks too.

Twat of the week – Ashley Williams – -2 points

Sam Allardyce solved whatever problems there were at Everton for all of about two games. They’re surprisingly leaky, especially away from home, and three red cards, the latest of which was dished out to their captain for the day, is the most for any team in the top flight. Apart from those bruising bastards over at Watford of course.

It’s back to the comfort of a regular 10 match gameweek, by the end of which we’ll know the winners of this season’s Buckets Cup. Shoelace Untied play league leaders, Aquamar. There may be 34 places separating them in the league, but Shoelace, over the duration of the cup, have outscored Aquamar in three of the five gameweeks. Their aggregate scores fall in favour of Aquamar 316-302, but it’s a close run thing.

For the semi final Shoelace decided to take as many hits as possible to get out the best possible team. It worked – to a degree. It was far from the best team performance, but it was enough to get them into the final, and strangely, even saw them climb the league. The same tactic might be a bit easier to implement this week with a full schedule and a full roster of players to choose from. The league has clearly escaped them, so taking the full whack of a 60 point hit is irrelevant. Maybe it’s even bench boost week for Shoelace? Aquamar have a full set of chips and wildcards at their disposal. With their team clearly set up for last week’s reduced fixture list, they may need to turn to their wildcard to get back on track.

Remember, a wildcard and a chip can’t be played in the same week, so those of you waiting to draft in players to play a bench boost or triple captain need to think about doing it beforehand. Another future gameweek has been reduced to allow for the FA Cup semi finals. Gameweek 34, as it stands, is down to just six fixtures, although I believe there is scope for some of those fixtures to be played within the same gameweek, either on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Hopefully some of these cancelled fixtures will get there rescheduled dates soon.

It may only be mid March, but the international break brings the month to a close this week. Ordinarily I’d post a mini table showing the monthly contenders. Trust me, there are about 30 teams in it, so I won’t bother. Aquamar and Shoelace are in contention. They could be on for double success this week.

Quick one this week. Walking With Memphis have won manager of the week again. They won it last week, so no prizes for guessing who heads the March manager of the month table. Nine of their eleven players contributed, and they took full advantage of the inevitable Manchester City goal blitz against Villa. Although it probably could and should have been even more convincing. WWM’s City contingent scored 37 of their 89 point total. And it moves them into the top 10. In two weeks they’ve climbed fourteen places and to within 40 points of Europe. There’s still hope.

The first round of the Buckets Cup saw early exits for Rocky Ba Bauer and Atletico Chappers. And there’ll be a new name on the trophy as Sergio Five 0 were knocked out by FC Caligula. Progress to the quarter finals wont be easy for our league leaders as they’ve been drawn against The Golden Boys, who posted their best score for sometime, helped by a triple captain Aguero. See the full round two draw on the cup link.

Player of the week – Dimitri Payet – 13 points. His first award.

Bargain of the week – Joshua King – 13 points. Condemning Newcastle to the Championship.

Donkey of the week – Juan Mata – -2 points. He’s not meant to get sent off.

The second round of the Buckets Cup has thrown up a few interesting ties. Second placed Your Ad Here will play fourth placed Atletico Chappers, and current leaders, FC Caligula, take on cup holders Sergio Five 0. The lowest ranked team left in are Bish Bosh Goal. They face a tricky task against top four bothering Pretty Schitty City. The tie between Crazylegs and Rico United guarantees a bottom ten team in the quarter finals.

Those midweek scores were a bit of a nightmare. How have Manchester City and Arsenal become the two most unreliable teams in the league? I mean, you know what you’re going to get out of Villa, Newcastle and Norwich. You know not to go anywhere near. We don’t need to be agonising over dropping Aguero or Ozil. Particularly with both Arsenal and City due to play in next week’s reduced fixture schedule.

City should get back to winning ways immediately. Surely it can’t be four successive defeats at home to Aston Villa? It might even be a week to consider the triple captain. When City spanked Newcastle 6-1 back in the autumn, Sergio Aguero scored 75 points for Romeo’s Honda Van. We could have a repeat performance.

A spate of injuries has hit Arsenal at the worst possible time. It appears Petr Cech and Laurent Koscielny will both miss the next couple of games, the first of which is the North London derby. There’s no need to rush to any rash decisions on Spurs players just yet, despite their defeat at West Ham in midweek. For starters, it is only one defeat, not three in four like City or Arsenal. And they also line up in next weeks’ reduced schedule….against Villa.